Peach Cafe‘s brunch offering is so popular that snagging a seat on the weekend can often be tricky. The Auchenflower eatery, known for its picture-perfect brunch plates and covetable confections, has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds since unveiling its slick refurb in 2022. These days, you’ve got to get in quick to secure one of its chunky NYC-style cookies or its Instagrammable specialty beverages. But, in good news for long-time fans of Peach’s imaginative range of eats, the crew has just opened a new source for its crowd-favourite items over in Spring Hill.

Last month, the Peach Cafe team opened Much Love – a modern cafe slotted at the base of the new Spring Hill Day Hospital on Boundary Street. Spying a gap in the area for an extra coffee and chow location – and seeking a site that could help alleviate the demand on its Auchenflower flagship – owners Nick Riccardo and Scarlett Spurr (who is also executive chef) decided to create a casual-leaning concept that would not only appeal to locals, but workers and visitors to the nearby hospital.

“It’s such an under-utilised area of Brisbane,” says Nick. “There’s a good 300–400 people coming through here now with this new development, plus all of the banners for new developments up along the street.”

The 34-seater space’s fit-out is crisply contemporary in style, reflecting its newly constructed digs. Polished concrete floors are offset by green tiles, plants and timber furnishings, with banks of bifold doors opening up to the street, letting in light and airflow. “The beauty of the Much Love brand is that it slides into the aesthetic of the building,” says Nick. “We don’t want to be the hero, necessarily – we want to be an addition and just give the space a pulse.”

While Much Love looks different from Peach’s light and bright interior, the menu is loaded with a suite of its sibling cafe’s greatest hits. Diners will spy the Boyfriend Benny (bacon and soft-poached eggs on a house-baked croissant with misoracha hollandaise and greens), the Sweetie Pie Hotcake (condensed milk creme brulee hotcake with vanilla ice-cream, macadamia crumble, winter fruits and gold leaf), the Sunny Side Halloumi Flatbread (with hummus, fried eggs, sunflower dukkah and green-onion oil) and lunch bites like the hot-honey chicken burger. With an extra kitchen space to play around in, Scarlett will also be using Much Love to trial new and exciting dishes before they debut on Peach Cafe’s menu.

“A lot of the stuff crosses over from what we have from Peach,” explains Scarlett. “We try and work with a formula of what we know people want, but then we’ll spin the flavours seasonally and that reflects more on what people are chasing.”

“It’s probably more of a creative kitchen here – a place where we can really start playing around with new things and just trying ideas,” adds Nick, encouraging diners to check in regularly. “This is a designated space where Scarlett’s going to be creating. It’s a lab.”

In great news for sweet tooth-sporting regulars, Much Love will also be serving trays of Scarlett’s highly sought after cookies, which rapidly sell out at Peach daily.

“Peach is getting too busy for what we already have, so we’re starting to produce more here so we can push the product out there and keep on top of the turnover,” says Scarlett. “[The cookies] are genuinely hand-rolled. We’ve rolled thousands of those – maybe even in the hundreds of thousands. We were selling out before we can roll them every day. Now we are coming out with a line of six standard ones that’ll be in all stores and then additional seasonal ones each round.”

The core range of cookies include strawberry matcha, red velvet, peanut butter, Nutella and Golden Gaytime, available alongside drinks like Much Love’s own custom coffee blend, three kinds of matcha-based beverages (original, peach milk and the virally popular strawberry milk matcha), Biscoff lattes, Teddy Bears’ Picnic hot chocolate and chai lattes.

The best news? This likely won’t be the last Much Love location you’ll see opening around Brisbane. Oh, and also, we could even see a new Peach Cafe location open further in the future.

“Much Love is definitely going to be our cut and copy, high-volume location model,” reveals Nick. “It’s more of a corporate brand that will sit nicely in a lobby – it’s neutral and it’s quite minimal. Peach is the concept that we want to be a little bit more strategic with. They’ll be placed very, very far away from each other – north, south, east, west, maybe Sunny Coast or the Gold Coast.”

Much Love is now open to the public from Monday to Friday – head to the Stumble Guide for operating hours and contact details.